How Pomegranates Can Help Treat Prostate Cancer

In my last blog I talked about the widening gap between real science, whose interest is in discovering the truth and in generally creating a more intelligent world, and commercial science which appears to want to patent and use anything it finds to further the financial wealth of a select minority of already wealthy individuals.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people in the world, commercial science now appears also to have taken a rather dubious course of leading people away from effective real science. Science which ordinary people could use to empower themselves, and help themselves prevent and treat many forms of illness at relatively low costs.

Chinese Medicine is full of such low cost and self help techniques and treatments. It was founded with the concept of helping the patient to understand how they became sick and how they can prevent reoccurrence of their illness in the future. It was developed at a time and through philosophies such as Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, where money and wealth were not the primary goals. This is very different to the position commercialised Western Medicine now finds itself in, where it is being driven by secrecy, competition and capitalistic market forces.

During the time I spent writing my book, I researched and found many Western studies to back up the theories which Chinese Medicine has evolved regarding health and illness over thousands of years through the use of empirical research.

One such case is the studies I came across regarding the treatment of prostate Cancer.

In the United Kingdom over 30,000 men are diagnosed with this illness every year and over 10,000 men die from it. In the United States it is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in men.

Amongst other things, Chinese Medicine uses bitter flavours and herbs as part of the treatment and prevention of cancers. So whilst writing my book I searched for evidence of the effects of bitter tasting foods in Western trials on cancer in the human body. There are an over whelming number of Western studies to support this Chinese view point.

Two of such studies I found, where in this case in relation to prostate cancer and the use of the bitter tasting juice from pomegranates as detailed below. As you read them, bear in mind that both studies are involving simple, ordinary, easily obtainable pomegranate juice.

The first, conducted by a team at the University of Wisconsin in the US and appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, found that an extract of pomegranate juice when tested on laboratory cultures of human prostate cancer cells, killed the cancer cells. They found that the higher the dose of pomegranate the more the cancer cells would die.

They then injected mice with human prostate cancer cells. They fed one group of mice pure water and another two groups with water mixed with o.1% pomegranate juice or 0.2% pomegranate juice. Their results showed that the cancer in the mice receiving the highest dose of pomegranate juice was significantly slowed in comparison to the growth of the tumours in the mice fed only water.

The second study was conducted by researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles. It was published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research in 2006. It involved 50 men who after receiving surgery or radiation treatment for prostate cancer, all then showed signs of the disease rapidly returning.

In the study they were given an 8 oz. (0.24 litre) glass of pomegranate juice to drink daily. The progression of prostate cancer cells are measured by levels of a chemical called PSA (prostate specific antigen). Basically the higher levels of this detected, the quicker the cancer is growing. The team at UCLA measured how long it took for the PSA levels to double in individuals in the group drinking the pomegranate juice. They discovered that whereas average times for PSA levels to double is 15 months, in those consuming the pomegranate this had become 54 months, nearly taking a staggering four times the length of time for it to double.

In my opinion and that of Chinese Medicine, I feel it is obvious to deduce from this that pomegranate juice has anti-cancer properties, which should not just be used to help as part of the treatment of cancer but also should be encouraged to be taken as part of a healthy lifestyle to help in preventing cancer from occurring in the first place.

These studies are just two examples of how simple changes in diet may strongly influence the occurrence of diseases such as cancer.

As pomegranate juice has been shown by Western science to be very effective in helping to treat and slow the progression of prostate cancer, a disease impacting and destroying the lives of thousands of men (and affecting women through the loss of their partners, fathers, brothers and friends). Then the next question is to ask ourselves why such a simple treatment or preventive strategy is not more widely encouraged. Even if the evidence at some later date turned out to be weaker than the studies currently indicate, it would certainly still have caused no harm to men to drink a glass of this juice a day. So why when we are dealing with the biggest male cancer in the UK, why is this information not on posters in doctor’s clinics and in hospitals? Why haven’t I seen adverts on the TV and in the media providing these scientific facts?

In my opinion, sadly this simply comes down to a lack of commercial profits to be made by providing this vital information to the general public.

In future blogs I will at some stage discuss how bitter fruits like pomegranate, grape and many berries can successfully detoxify and help prevent diseases in the body like cancer, in accordance with the logical, easy to understand and implement principles found in the theories of Chinese and Eastern medicines.

Chinese Medicine has a very clever understanding of how foods react and cause actions in our bodies. Once you have learnt this wisdom, then over time it becomes easy to rectify many weaknesses and ailments in your system, thus improving your overall standard of living and reducing the likelihood of illness.